The meat has become increasingly important in Estonian dining table. Due to this, the pig-breeding has reached second position in livestock branches after Estonian milk production. One of the reasons why Estonia’s swine-breedes export their product behind the border is because Estonia has reached an almost 100% level of self supplement with pork. During the years, Estonia’s live swine has been exported to Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, The Netherlands and Russia. In 2006, Russia became the main target market for Estonia’s live swine. Years 2010 and 2011 were special to swine-breeders because full capacity of export went to Russia. It was not only until 2012, when Russia established an import ban on live animals coming from the European Union, that Lithuania and Poland became new target countries for Estonia’s live swine. Comparative advantage in the export of Estonia’s live swine was, among all the observed countries, the best in Russia. The biggest export of comparative advantage of of live swines was in year 2011. Although indexes of comparative advantage of Russia’s exports arised and decreased in the observed years, Estonia’s live swine export success rose averagely 73% a year. Meanwhile European Union’s average internal export success was stabile but still only 7% a year. Therefore trading of live swine directed to Russia has a strong comparative advantage. The importance of Russia’s market to Estonia’s swine-breeders was confirmed in an interview with the manager of Tartu Agro Aavo Möldri and with Aiu Põllumajandus’s member of the board Alar Põldmaa, in the interview both of the managers claimed that a large part of the
whole product was exported to Russia. Also, due to the livestock import ban, Tartu Agro lost a profit of over 30 000 euros in 2012. Both of the companies have found new target markets in Latvia and Lithuania. Neither of the companies plan to export extra value products to Russia even though it would be possible to do so. However the value of extra product was confirmed by Pandivere Seafarm, who started appraising their product by chopping up their meat. It can be only discussed what the situation could be if Russia had not implemented an import ban. Probably the success of Estonia’s live swine exports to Russia had increased even more. Because the political reasons, Estonian pig-breeders continually can not export live swines to Russia. Estonia can not use it’s advantage from it’s geographical location and the relatived comparative advantage. If pig farmes have had exported to several markets and not just live swines but also value-added products, the risks could have been more diffused.